Robust estimation from multiple graphs under gross error contamination

Abstract

Estimation of graph parameters based on a collection of graphs is essential for a wide range of graph inference tasks. In practice, weighted graphs are generally observed with edge contamination. We consider a weighted latent position graph model contaminated via an edge weight gross error model and propose an estimation methodology based on robust $\mathrm{L}_q$ estimation followed by low-rank adjacency spectral decomposition. We demonstrate that, under appropriate conditions, our estimator both maintains $\mathrm{L}_q$ robustness and wins the bias-variance tradeoff by exploiting low-rank graph structure. We illustrate the improvement offered by our estimator via both simulations and a human connectome data experiment.

Publication
Arxiv preprint